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I'm SSHing into a remote server on the command line, and trying to copy a directory onto my local machine with the scp command. However, the remote server returns this "usage" message:
[Stewart:console/ebooks/discostat] jmm% scp -p ./styles/
usage: scp [-1246BCEpqrv] [-c cipher] [-F ssh_config] [-i identity_file]
[-l limit] [-o ssh_option] [-P port] [-S program]
[[user#]host1:]file1 [...] [[user#]host2:]file2
[Stewart:console/ebooks/discostat] jmm%
I'd like to be able to transfer files in both directions. From what I read, I thought the above command would work for downloading, and scp -p [localpath] [remotepath] for uploading?
You need to scp something somewhere. You have scp ./styles/, so you're saying secure copy ./styles/, but not where to copy it to.
Generally, if you want to download, it will go:
# download: remote -> local
scp user#remote_host:remote_file local_file
where local_file might actually be a directory to put the file you're copying in. To upload, it's the opposite:
# upload: local -> remote
scp local_file user#remote_host:remote_file
If you want to copy a whole directory, you will need -r. Think of scp as like cp, except you can specify a file with user#remote_host:file as well as just local files.
Edit: As noted in a comment, if the usernames on the local and remote hosts are the same, then the user can be omitted when specifying a remote file.
If copying to/from your desktop machine, use WinSCP, or if on Linux, Nautilus supports SCP via the Connect To Server option.
scp can only copy files to a machine running sshd, hence you need to run the client software on the remote machine from the one you are running scp on.
If copying on the command line, use:
# copy from local machine to remote machine
scp localfile user#host:/path/to/whereyouwant/thefile
or
# copy from remote machine to local machine
scp user#host:/path/to/remotefile localfile
You need to specify both source and destination, and if you want to copy directories you should look at the -r option.
So to recursively copy /home/user/whatever from remote server to your current directory:
scp -pr user#remoteserver:whatever .
No, you still need to scp [from] [to] whichever way you're copying
The difference is, you need to scp -p server:serverpath localpath
Related
I want to scp copy some files from a hard drive to my local disk. To ssh to the hard drive, I first have to ssh to a server, then ssh from there on to the hard drive. Normally I'd just copy the files to a location on the server, then scp them to my machine e.g:
scp -r user#server.example.com: ~/folder/ ./
The files I want to copy this time are too big to do that. How do I scp directly from the hard drive through the server?
Set up a ssh proxy on the server that tunnels to the hard drive (which has its own ssh server right?)
Check this out:
https://serverfault.com/questions/341190/forward-ssh-through-ssh-tunnel
This should be similar to using scp with a server and your local machine, but use the mounted path to/from the hard drive in place of the path to/from your local machine.
scp -r user#server.example.com: ~/folder/ /Volumes/NameOfDrive
Very often I need to copy a file from a ssh connection. Lets say a mysql dump. what I do is
local $ ssh my_server
server$ mysqldump database >> ~/export.sql
server$ exit
local $ scp myserver:~/export.sql .
I know ssh has a lot of features like ssh-agent, port-forwarding, etc, and I was wondering if there is anyway to execute scp FROM the server to copy to my local computer (without creating another ssh connection).
First of all, this question is off-topic here, so it will be migrated or put on hold early.
Anyway, I described the solution for similar problem here, but it should help you: https://stackoverflow.com/a/33266538/2196426
Summed up, yes it is possible using remote port forwarding:
[local] $ ssh -R 2222:xyz-VirtuaBox:22 remote
[remote]$ scp -P 2222 /home/user/test xyz#localhost:/home/user
I have managed to connect to a remote server through ssh tunneling. No how can I copy files from remote server to my local computer. Considering that I just want to do it from remote server to my local computer.
I dont know how to write this command
"scp file/I/want/to/copy localhost/home/folder"
thanks a lot
Example:
scp username#server:/home/username/file_name /home/local-username/file-name
check this:
http://www.garron.me/linux/scp-linux-mac-command-windows-copy-files-over-ssh.html
scp -r (source)hostname:/(location of the file to be copied)/(file name) (Destination)hostname:/(location of the folder where the file should be copied to)
For example:
scp -r ram.desktop.overflow.com:/home/Desktop/Ram/abcd.txt rajesh.desktop.overflow.com:/home/documents/
This question already has answers here:
scp or sftp copy multiple files with single command
(19 answers)
Closed last year.
I would like to know an easy way to use scp to copy files and folders that are present in different paths on my file system. The SSH destination server requests a password and I cannot put this in configuration files. I know that scp doesn't have a password parameter that I could supply from a script, so for now I must copy each file or directory one by one, writing my password every time.
in addition to the already mentioned glob:
you can use {,} to define alternative paths/pathparts in one single statement
e.g.: scp user#host:/{PATH1,PATH2} DESTINATION
From this site:
Open the master
SSHSOCKET=~/.ssh/myUsername#targetServerName
ssh -M -f -N -o ControlPath=$SSHSOCKET myUsername#targetServerName
Open and close other connections without re-authenticating as you like
scp -o ControlPath=$SSHSOCKET myUsername#targetServerName:remoteFile.txt ./
Close the master connection
ssh -S $SSHSOCKET -O exit myUsername#targetServerName
It's intuitive, safer than creating a key pair, faster than creating a compressed file and worked for me!
If you can express all the names of the files you want to copy from the remote system using a single glob pattern, then you can do this in a single scp command. This usage will only support a single destination folder on the local system for all files though. For example:
scp 'RemoteHost:/tmp/[abc]*/*.tar.gz' .
copies all of the files from the remote system which are names (something).tar.gz and which are located in subdirectories of /tmp whose names begin with a, b, or c. The single quotes are to protect the glob pattern from being interpreted from the shell on the local system.
If you cannot express all the files you want to copy as a single glob pattern and you still want the copy to be done using a single command (and a single SSH connection which will ask for your passsword only once) then you can either:
Use a different command than scp, like sftp or rsync, or
Open an SSH master connection to the remote host and run several scp commands as slaves of that master. The slaves will piggyback on the master connection which stays open throughout and won't ask you for a password. Read up on master & slave connections in the ssh manpage.
create a key pair, copy the public key to the server side.
ssh-keygen -t rsa
Append content inside the file ~/.ssh/identity.pub to file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 of server side user. You need not to type password anymore.
However, be careful! anybody who can access your "local account" can "ssh" to the server without password as well.
Alternatively, if you cannot use public key authentication, you may add the following configuration to SSH (either to ~/.ssh/config or as the appropriate command-line arguments):
ControlMaster auto
ControlPath /tmp/ssh_mux_%h_%p_%r
ControlPersist 2m
With this config, the SSH connection will be kept open for 2 minutes so you'll only need to type the password the first time.
This post has more details on this feature.
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I would like to automate the rsync task as a cron job. Since it needs the passphrase I am not able to do the cronjob. I need to specify the passphrase along with the rsync command or I will store the passphrase in a file and I will read from it. My command will look like this:
rsync -aPe "ssh -i ' . $server->{'ssh_key'} . '" ' . $server_lock_dir;
So where do I put the password ?
You don't need to do that - just need to set up a pair of ssh keys and put the public key in the remote system's .ssh directory.
Then you just do this:
rsync -a -e ssh /local/path/ server:/remote/path/
(Note that -e ssh has been the default for quite a few years now, so you can probably omit it, unless you're using a very old version.)
There's a "how to" guide on setting up the keys here.
If you want this to work from cron, you have several possibilities:
setup password-less ssh keys - not very secure
setup password-less ssh keys, but combine them with ssh ForceCommand in the authorized_keys file to limit the commands that can be run with that ssh key. See man sshd, google on "ssh ForceCommand"
setup passworded ssh keys, but combine them with keychain to keep the key in memory between sessions. I've written a blog post on this: ssh, ssh-agent, keychain and cron notes
If you want to copy files remotely:
Make sure you have a public key on your local machine that can log into the remote machine.(in this case the my ssh-key is "/home/myaccount/.ssh/id_rsa"
Specify local folder you want to sync with the remote, in my case "/home/myaccount/mysourcefolder"
Specify the destination folder full path in the remote server, in my case remoteaccount#remoteserver:"/home/remoteaccount/mydestinationfolder/"
Note:
--progress is to show progress for each file being copied
-a to transfer recusively all files in the mysourcefolder
-v for verbosity
-z to compress data portions for small files
My command will look like below:
rsync -avz --progress -e "ssh -i /home/myaccount/.ssh/id_rsa"
/home/myaccount/mysourcefolder
remoteaccount#remoteserver:"/home/remoteaccount/mydestinationfolder/"